"The Fine Print", by Michael
Schrader
A EULOGY FOR MY FATHER, HOWARD GEORGE
SCHRADER, 1 FEB 1926 – 7 SEP 2011
(Written 09 September 2011, posted 12
September 2011)
I’ve written a lot of
things over the years – research papers, reports, e-mails, memos, pointless
essay tests – but this is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to write. A simple eulogy. A eulogy means that someone is no longer with
us, and that person is my father. And,
personally, I’d rather have him with us.
I first met my father 45
years and 5 months ago, but I was kind of little then, so I don’t
remember. I am sure that when my mother
introduced him to his fifth child and second son, he was as proud as a
peacock. Even though I don’t remember
because I was little, I know this to be true because he was my father, and that
is something that my father would do. I
am sure that when I had to be put in the oxygen tent because I was blue, that
he worried and paced the floor. Again,
even though I was too small to remember, I know this to be true because he was
my father, and that is something that my father would do.
My earliest recollections
of my father are of a giant! He was 6
foot 4, and when you are a little kid, 6 foot 4 is the same as sixty-four feet-
huge! His size 14 shoes were ginormous, and I remember my mother and sisters referring
to them as boats, being so big that people could fit in them and use them as
boats. When you are five years old, and
you hear your father’s shoes called boats, your imagination goes wild. I always
wanted to throw his shoes in the bath tub to see if they could float, but I was
afraid of making the giant not so gentle.
When I was growing up, my
father was always busy. He worked lots
of overtime to help support his family and was going to night school to get a
Masters Degree. My father was definitely not lazy. I think it had something to
do with growing up in the hardship of the Great Depression. He told me many
stories over the years of his childhood years and the deprivations he suffered
as the oldest child.
Growing up in the Great
Depression made my father who he was. He
told me stories of the mischief he and my uncles would get into when they were
teenagers, how they would walk the streetcar lines and tip over outhouses, and
his eyes would twinkle when he would mention that it was the most fun when
someone was in it! When I was an adult,
he told me that he would deliberately do things to annoy my mother, just to shake
things up a bit and keep it interesting!
He also revealed his dirty little secret, that
those times when we were younger that we thought he was dozing in his chair he
really wasn’t! His best mischief was
always at the expense of my sister Terry’s dates, for, without fail, whenever
she would bring home a new suitor, he would always
answer the door holding whatever sharp object he just happened to be using at
the time! Looking back, I find it
interesting how he always knew exactly when to sharpen his hatchet blade or cut
the watermelon with the big knife.
Needless to say, Terry’s dates always responded with a very hearty “Yes
sir!” when my father would ask them, “You will have her home by ten, right?”
Of the five children, I
feel the most blessed because I had the most one on one time with my father. My
sister Karen, the eldest, didn’t even get two years of alone time before my
second sister Denise came along, and she was too young to remember it. I, being the youngest, had him all to myself
when I was 18 and all of the older siblings had flown the coop. I worked side-by-side with my father
reinforcing the floor joists of the house.
We built a loft bed for my dorm room together. I tapped his remarkable wealth of engineering
knowledge when I struggled in engineering school. After I graduated and went to work at
McDonnell Douglas, we would have lunch together. After he retired, he helped me
with some of my engineering projects, a sort of weird father-son role reversal,
but all that mattered to me was that I got to spend time with my father, and I
enjoyed each and every minute, even when we spent the better part of an
afternoon arguing engineering on the top of a dam!
My father was very proud
to be an engineer. Some viewed his pride
as vanity and arrogance, and ridiculed and insulted him for it. In his later years he took me into his
confidence and showed me his grades from college, and I understood why he was
so proud. College wasn’t easy for him,
and he struggled mightily, but my father soldiered on, never gave up, and
succeeded. This determination in the
face of adversity is one of the qualities so many, myself included, admired
about him.
My father grew up poor,
and he could have used that as an excuse to fail. He didn’t.
My father struggled through engineering school. He could have used that as an excuse to give
up; he didn’t. My father ended up stuck in a lower level position, watching
those he trained and mentored pass him by.
He could have just thrown up his hands and stopped trying; he didn’t. Even after he got sick in the last year of
his life, he never gave up. This past
Easter, he refused to have the priest come to him with Communion, telling me
that as long as he could walk, he would go to the priest just like everyone
else in the congregation. I was so proud
of him, I cried. In May, after he had
already been hospitalized for his condition, he made the long journey to
If you ask anyone who knew
my father, there were two more qualities they admired even more than his
determination – his kindness and his generosity. I am not going to say that my father couldn’t
be stern and strict when he wanted to be, because he could. When I failed to follow the rules or failed
to behave in the way that he expected of me, I felt the consequences. Of course, because his disappointed look always
broke my heart, I, for the most part, toed the line. The thought of disappointing my father was
too much for me to bear. Much of the
despair I have felt in my life is because I felt I disappointed him. It was only when he told me in one of his moments
of candor that he was proud of me that I could find inner peace.
There have been many
people who have been mean and insulting to my father. Not once did I ever hear him say anything
negative about any of them. I would get
angry with him for being nice to those who were mean and hateful, but my anger
would not dissuade him, and he would still be nice. He personified everything Jesus taught.
Above all else, my father
was extremely generous. Time and time
again he would ride in like the cavalry to bail out me and my family to give us
safe harbor from the financial storm swirling around us, knowing full well he
would never see a penny of it again.
That didn’t matter to him, as he understood, having grown up in the
Depression, that we are all one step away from a financial shipwreck, and that
we have a duty and an obligation to help each other, especially family, when
God has given us good fortune. And it
wasn’t just family that my father was generous to. He contributed a lot of time and talent to
his beloved Catholic Church, teaching children the wonders of Catholicism and
standing by the side of those who wanted to be Catholic. My father would always bring his toolbox with
him and was always eager to help fix things that needed to be fixed. The greatest insult one could give him, the
greatest hurt one could do to him, was to turn down his generosity, and sadly
there were those who did.
When I was younger, and my
father and I were going through one of our many periods where we just really
annoyed each other, I made a comment that I never wanted to be like him. Not too long ago, I looked in the mirror, and
I didn’t see my reflection, I saw my father’s.
I smiled. I didn’t realize it, but slowly, over time, I had become a lot
like him. I am proud to be his son. I am proud that my middle name, Howard, is
his name. I am proud that I have had the
opportunity to share the same profession. I hope I can carry on his legacy as a
father, brother, uncle, and son.
My father is now one of
God’s Angels. I know he knows that we
love him and miss him dearly; there is a hole in my heart that can never be
filled. I just hope that far into the
future, when I pass from this world, I will join him in heaven.
The last time I saw my
father, he was already slipping into semi-consciousness. He had been sleeping and unaware that we were
leaving. Before I started up the car, my
wonderful wife told me to march back inside and tell him that I loved him. So, I went back inside, and told him that I
love him. He awoke from his slumber,
looked at me, and said “I love you too, son”, and went back to sleep. The last words my father said to me was that he loved me, and I will always treasure that.
Dad- you were a wonderful
man and a great father and I am sorry that I didn’t tell you that more.
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